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User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: Saint Valentine's Day
Many people have an episode they like, even though it's hated by the general population. This is true of everyone in the Code Lyoko fandom, and most fandoms in general "for Star Trek, these people are called niners." Many people think that "Saint Valentine's Day" was kind of stupid, but I loved it, and remember the very first time I saw it "I was in elementary school, and I'm in college now." Is the episode silly? Yes, but I love it anyway. So I may be biased, but I will do my best to review Saint Valentine's Day. =The Review= Right off the bat, we can tell the episode is going to be interesting, because it's written by Laurent Turner. For those who aren't obsessive and lonely, Laurent Turner wrote a reasonable number of episodes, which tended to break the mold more than most episodes. His most noteworthy episodes include "The Girl of the Dreams" and "The Secret". He was more willing to admit the flaws of the characters, and so I have a soft spot for his episodes, even though he's made his share of mistakes. We see a guy walk into the dormitory building and leave a present for Aelita. Apparently the school doesn't even bother to lock the building, or people who aren't even students can get keys to it. Did you really expect anything better from a school that took 3 years to teach "Y=MX+B"? Aelita is having horrifying flashbacks, "PTSD too? What a surprise...". This is so routine that even Aelita doesn't notice it, and she gets up like nothing happened, and opens the gift. It's a necklace with an acid-trip smokey interior. Okay, Aelita, that thing is using the same special effects as that program that tries to kill you in the rare weeks that you're not trying to kill yourself. Make what you will of that. The student who is never seen again goes into the second floor for some reason, and is spotted by Jim. I hate to ask, but why did he do that? The staircase is a direct path between the third floor and the ground floor. There was no reason to stop on this one. Maybe X.A.N.A. just wanted to mess with Jim "Everyone else was doing it. I just wanted to be Popular!" This makes no sense, but I'll let it slide for one reason: When Jim asks how he got in, he just shows his hand, because they don't even bother to lock the door. I love this sort of comedy. The guy then magnetically sticks to the lead paint in the ceiling, and crawls off. The next morning, Yumi likes the tacky necklace of special effects. She doesn't notice the smoke of doom either. :Aelita: "But who gave it to me and why?" :Yumi: "Aelita, what day is it?" :Aelita: "Tuesday! Oh crap, that means I need to work in a suicide attempt, and I don't have time for that and bio." :Yumi: "Not just any Tuesday! It's Saint Valentine's Day! A day where we celebrate some dead catholics and neo-pagan-dead people via slutty costumes and preventing single lonely people from buying chocolate, which we do by buying it and giving it to eachother!" :Aelita: "I thought that was Halloween." :Yumi: "We do it then too." :Aelita: "God, you have TWO DAYS FOR THIS?! And you humans call ME messed up?!" TRANSITION! :Aelita: "Thank's for the necklace Jeremie!" :Jeremie: "Umm, you're welcome?" :Ulrich: "You didn't give it to her, did you?" :Jeremie: "No, I just assumed it was a fragment from an alternate timeline that bled through a return to the past." :Odd: "I thought that didn't happen. The RTTP eliminates the old timeline except for us." :Jeremie: "The RTTP is French technology. It fails pretty frequently. Sometimes photos bleed through, sometimes a memory or too can slip in, one time a song came through. It's about as reliable as you would expect from something from a Renault factory. Sometimes the results are massive". :Ulrich: "Like that time Sam was driven insane, and she went all Michael Jackson on us, bleached her skin and hair, and changed her name?" :Jeremie: "No, that was just a way to get away from poverty." :Odd: "HEY! JUST BECAUSE SHE'S BLACK, SHE'S NOT NECESSARILY POOR!" :Ulrich: "Yeah, but she actually is poor. Ah racism, you even affect people in France." :Jeremie: "Ulrich, you're German. You have no room to talk." We then get a scene where Jeremie gets insanely jealous over everyone with any relationship with Aelita. I'm not a fan of freud, but Aelita certainly does seem to get involved with men who want to isolate her from other people. After a rare scene where Delmas isn't a moron, Ulrich gets to be the reasonable one, and comments on how stupid the situation is. Sissi then gives Ulrich two subsonics tickets, and William gives Yumi roses. Ulrich then reads Sissi a terrible but sincere sounding poem for Sissi, which Sissi loves because it rhymes. X.A.N.A. then mentally takes over Aelita via the necklace of doom, in the bathroom of all places, because that's the most disturbing location to violate someone. Everyone is realistic and irrational, and X.A.N.A. and a tower is shown to be active. Apparently the superscan doesn't work this week. Aelita and Jeremie kiss, wooing the shippers, and creating an unrealistic scene. Aelita convinces Yumi to go to Lyoko with her, and Jeremie agrees to it because hormones. They then do a virtualization scene, and even the supercomputer knows something is up, not because of the necklace, which it points out to Jeremie, but because the attack music is used instead of the season 2 virtualization music, which means it's a trap. Odd is in detention, so Jeremie calls Ulrich, who then treats Sissi like crap "what a surprise". When Aelita gets to Lyoko, she starts her suicide attempt of the week, because it IS tuesday, attacks Yumi, and runs off towards the Ice Sector. Jeremie and Ulrich get Odd out of detention via a fake medical problem. Yumi is able to deal with the Krabs that blocked her path, and X.A.N.A. really should have known better than attacking a Japanese person with seafood. :Jeremie: "Yumi! X.A.N.A. has taken over Aelita and she's probably going to do something stupid and dangerous!" :Yumi: "Are you sure it's X.A.N.A.? This could just be Aelita doing a zero on the options. It IS tuesday. BTW, Thanks for the vehicle. Start up the season 2 virtualization music. We're going to need any advantage we can get." :Jeremie: "You got it! I was actually going to do that anyway, cuz I'm sending in Ulrich an Odd." On Lyoko, Yumi gets in a vehicle accident with Aelita, who then does a badass backflip off of the board. I think that's actually a cool shot. Aelita then runs to her weekly suicide attempt but Yumi tries to stop her. Aelita encounters the Aelita options! :0. Act suicidal and/or crazy. :1. Attack it with a long single note of angry music. :2. Have an argument with it. :3. Use Energy Fields. She's already doing 0, since it's Tuesday. Everyone is fighting, because love is a lie so 2 is out, and 3 isn't unlocked until season 3, so long single note of angry music it is! She then nearly drops Yumi into the digital sea, since Yumi must nearly fall in once per season. Ulrich then rescues her, and uses the "I can't hold on much longer" line. He holds her for a while, and explains that he wrote the poem for her. Yumi then nearly dies. Jeremie comments casually that he needs to boost that program. :Ulrich: "JEREMIE! BE SERIOUS! YUMI JUST NEARLY DIED!" :Jeremie: "Oh please, you people nearly fall into the sea on such a routine basis that one time I didn't even notice, and then had to waste a program because of it. See? She's fine!" Yumi then walks up casually. I'm not joking about this part. Aelita then unleashes a #2 again in this week's #0. She then does it again! Eventually, Jeremie has an idea: :Yumi: "Just shoot the damn Scyphozoa in the eye like we do with everything else?" :Jeremie: "No, just shoot Aelita. Everyone else is trying to kill her: X.A.N.A., Aelita, MIB by leaving her with Franz Hopper, Franz Hopper by trapping her in a battery powered machine; I say we just join the party." :Odd: "Okay it worked! She's back to her normal suicidal self, as opposed to a controlled suicidal self!" The tower is then deactivated with the power of recycled footage, and they get the chip out of the necklace to analyze. Ulrich then uses the power of Sissi's hormones to get Jeremie out of a suspension. Yumi is then poetic about the poem. Review Summary People ask why X.A.N.A. was able to control Aelita, when he normally couldn't. The answer is obvious. A standard spectre can't control a Lyoko Warrior. However, this wasn't a standard Spectre. It was actively enforced by a relay and a stable housing. And even then, it was a gradual takeover that took several hours in-universe. On a similar note, Why is Sissi willing to help Ulrich after he treats her like crap? Why is Jeremie so grating in this episode? It's because even though Jeremie is a freaking genius, he's still a person, with all the associated flaws, as is Sissi, except Sissi has no braincells. This episode says the characters aren't rational, but they are realistic. I also like possessed Aelita in this episode. You can tell that even though she's under X.A.N.A.'s control, she's still Aelita. She apologized to Yumi, flirted, got irritated with Odd, and overall, had personality. It wasn't a different person, it was Aelita, just with X.A.N.A. controlling her goals, not behavior. The episode has a few minor issues, such as how the necklace got made, why the superscan didn't work initially, why the necklace looks like an acid trip, etc. I'm willing to overlook some of these, because they're systemic to the show as a whole, but some of them can't be ignored. Combine that with the episode having a few funny moments, such as Ulrich's awful poem, and this episode gets an 8/10 from me. On a more serious unrelated note; I would like to thank all of my readers for enjoying my reviews. I would like to ask for a minor form of appreciation. I'm not making a Patreon account. Instead, I would like to ask all of you to, by lawful means only, set aside some money for a medical research group, the Foregen Organization: foregen.org. Foregen is working on researching regenerative medicine for victims of a specific type of non-consensual plastic surgery, that I can't mention on this blog, because of wiki content rules. However, this is a charity that is worthy of help, and I would like you all to try. In leu of donations to support Deadcoder's Reviews, I would like all of my viewers to donate some money to Foregen to aid medical research. Thank you all again for enjoying this review, and I hope it made you think about something. Category:Blog posts Category:Saint Valentine's Day